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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/24344128">A Relatively Easy Tragedy</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/ladivvinatravestia/pseuds/ladivvinatravestia'>ladivvinatravestia</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Series:</b></td><td>30 - 50 Feral Himbos [3]</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Wiedźmin | The Witcher - All Media Types</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Ableism, Abortion, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Background Relationships, Classism, Ensemble Cast, Families of Choice, Fertility Issues, Gender Roles, Multi, No-win situation, Patriarchy, Racism, Tragedy, established relationships - Freeform, everyone is poly because witchers, fuck Stregobor, graphic depictions of working conditions in BigLaw, no beta we die like men, witchers are pro-choice</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-05-23</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-05-23</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-04 07:53:36</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Mature</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>4,619</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/24344128</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/ladivvinatravestia/pseuds/ladivvinatravestia</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>Yennefer and Geralt become parents, although not in quite the way they were anticipating.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Geralt z Rivii | Geralt of Rivia/Jaskier | Dandelion, Geralt z Rivii | Geralt of Rivia/Yennefer z Vengerbergu | Yennefer of Vengerberg, Triss Merigold/Yennefer z Vengerbergu | Yennefer of Vengerberg</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Series:</b></td><td>30 - 50 Feral Himbos [3]</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Series URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/series/1756468</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>9</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>37</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Collections:</b></td><td>Banned Together Bingo 2020</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>A Relatively Easy Tragedy</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>For Banned Together Bingo 2020 square "Abortion"</p><p>Additional warnings: white author writing characters of colour; Canadian author writing American medical system; a reference to a fight where Yen threw an object at Geralt; while Yen is pregnant people touch her without her permission and offer her lots of unsolicited advice; Yen and Geralt are the subject of a really astonishing racial slur (that I actually heard someone use, seriously, how and why would I come up with something like this on my own); non-pregnant characters consume alcohol; Yen is not very in touch with her own emotions; canonical character deaths/presumed deaths occur off screen and are discussed on screen.</p>
    </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Yen gets a text from Jaskier, “Hey, sorry Lambert is such a,” and then, another one, “such a LAMBERT,” and a third, nothing but an eyeroll emoji.</p><p>“Hasn’t Triss been telling you not to apologize for things that aren’t your fault?” she texts back.</p><p>“Hasn’t Triss told <em> you </em> not to break the illusion of patient-therapist confidentiality?” Jaskier replies.  “Anyway, Geralt and I wanted to talk to you guys about your baby plans.  Do you have time to come over for brunch or coffee this weekend?”</p><p>Yen looks at the pile of work on her desk and the emails piling up in her inbox.  She would really love to be able to spend longer with them but, “I can probably spare a couple hours on Sunday morning,” she tells Jaskier.</p><p>“Great, I’ll text you and Triss the details :)” he replies.</p><p> </p><p>Yen has already ignored three emails from Stregobor by the time Jaskier is ushering everyone into the living room.  She told him she couldn’t make it into the office before noon today and she’s sticking to her story.  She tosses her phone back into her handbag and puts the whole thing by the door before sitting next to Triss on the couch Jaskier indicates for them.  Triss puts her arm around her and smiles.  Geralt sits in the love seat he is directed to by Jaskier and continues radiating discomfort, as he has all morning.  Finally, Jaskier comes back into the room with a tray of coffee cups and a carafe.  He sets it on the coffee table between them and then settles in to Geralt’s side on the love seat.</p><p>“So,” says Jaskier, and takes a careful sip of his coffee.</p><p>“So,” says Yen.  She makes a show of drumming her fingers on the arm of the couch, at least until Triss shoots her a warning look.  Jaskier is using his two-handed grip on his coffee cup to keep his hands still, but he’s bouncing one leg up and down nervously.</p><p>“Yen,” begins Geralt, then clams up again, but it’s seemingly enough to prompt Jaskier into what he’s planned to say.</p><p>“Geralt and I were talking and -”</p><p>What Jaskier means, of course, is that he extracted the entirety of Geralt’s thought processes and emotional state from Geralt sitting around brooding and saying “hmm” a couple of times.  Yen still loves Geralt, so for his sake, she’s glad that Jaskier has the patience to do all of the emotional labor for the both of them, but she’s reminded yet again of why it was the right choice for her to break things off with him.  Most days, she barely has the patience to do her <em> own </em> emotional labor.</p><p>“ - we’d like to help you out,” says Jaskier.</p><p>“You’re offering to father our baby,” Yen says, putting pieces together and filling in several blanks.</p><p>“Yes,” mutters Geralt, not making eye contact with anyone in the room.  Some part of Yen wants to know what changed, because kids were the only thing they ever truly fought about - big, spectacular fights with shouting and tears and - once only, and it was a time too far that she deeply regrets, a shattered jar of cherry jam.  But now - now, though, it’s just an offer to donate genetic material, so she and Triss don’t have to take their chances with some stranger from the internet.</p><p>“You two would be listed as the parents on all legal documents and, to the extent possible, we would give up our rights to custody or anything like that, but of course we’ll still be there to help you out if you need any child support or babysitting services or anything like that,” adds Jaskier.  He looks significantly more enthusiastic about the babysitting part than Geralt does.  Geralt’s primary objection in the past, and Yen has to admit he has something of a point, is that none of them exactly has a career that lends itself well to being a loving and attentive parent.</p><p>Yen and Triss have been dating forever, have been friends even longer than that - certainly, long enough to have a brief, unspoken conversation.  They look at each other and Yen says to Jaskier,</p><p>“We’ll have to think about it.”</p><p>“But no way am I letting either one of you fuck my girlfriend,” Triss adds.</p><p>Geralt doesn’t blush, exactly, but he looks rather like he wishes the entire couch would swallow him up.</p><p> </p><p>Actually being pregnant is a strange roller coaster of mixed emotions.  On the one hand, Yen feels like an actual goddess.  Sure, the morning sickness is getting a little old, but she is creating a whole new life, all by herself!  On the other hand, everyone - literally everyone - feels entitled to treat her to their opinions on pregnancy and child-rearing.  For each opinion that she’ll be a bad mother if she does a certain thing, there’s an equal opinion that she’ll be a bad mother if she doesn’t do that very thing.  Women who never worked a day in their lives, like Meve and Mrs. Pankratz, are telling her she’ll regret it if she doesn’t take at least a year off of work to bond with her baby.  The partners and associates at Vigo &amp; var Emreis LLP, a mostly-male group, seem to take pride in having taken no more than a few days off work to attend the births of their children.  Pavetta and Adda have entirely taken over the task of planning the gender-reveal party and baby shower, and it seems easier to just let them do what they want than to fight them for what Yen and Triss might actually want.  Strangers in grocery stores come up to rub her belly - in possibly even greater numbers than the people who think it’s okay to touch Triss’s hair without her permission.  Other strangers tell her, unprompted, that she’s glowing, that her baby is going to be so smart, look so exotic.  Once while she’s out with Triss, she hears someone complaining about immigrant single moms on welfare; and another time when she’s out with Geralt, someone makes a crack about how the baby will be “a dot Indian <em> and </em> a feather Indian.”  At the office, Stregobor seems determined to wring every last possible billable hour out of Yen before she goes off on maternity leave.  She hadn’t entirely decided how long she was going to take at first, but every time she sees that little smirk on his face as he casually drops by her office at four-thirty on a Friday afternoon with a file that “just came in” and needs to be worked on over the weekend, she’s determined to extend her leave by another two weeks.</p><p>This time, she smiles as pleasantly as she can manage, takes careful notes on what Stregobor says needs to be worked on, and then promises him she’ll get to it first thing tomorrow morning.</p><p>“This needs to go out tonight,” objects Stregobor.</p><p>“Then I guess you’ll have to find someone else to do it,” says Yen, standing up and grabbing some files to shove into her handbag.  She feels a twinge of pain in her lower back and ignores it.  Pregnancy is full of all sorts of strange physical sensations.  “I’m already running behind for an appointment with my doctor.”</p><p>Stregobor doesn’t need to know that the appointment is actually dinner at Regis and Dettlaff’s house.  It’s time for her to start being able to use her status as a parent to leave the office early on occasion, even if she’s still technically a parent-to-be.</p><p>After she and Triss get home from dinner, Yen draws herself up a nice bath - not too hot, that would be bad for the baby - and relaxes into it.  Triss joins her in the bathroom, a glass of red wine for herself and sparkling apple juice for Yen.</p><p>“You are going to be,” says Triss, and leans forward to kiss Yen before finishing her sentence, “the most beautiful mom.”</p><p>“No, you are!” Yen tells her, and splashes a bit of water at her playfully.  She drinks her juice, then sets the glass aside and starts rubbing her belly.  She knows five months is a little early for the baby to start kicking, but she’s excited anyway, eagerly analyzing each new sensation her body experiences in case it could be a sign of further development.  Unfortunately, most of it is just - heartburn and lower back spasms, like it was earlier today.</p><p>Triss says, “My mom used to sing to us kids when she was pregnant with us.”</p><p>Yen laughs.  “You know I can’t sing for shite, Triss.”</p><p>Triss sets her wine glass aside and moves off the toilet seat to kneel next to the tub.  “Good thing I can, then,” she smiles.  She puts her hand on top of Yen’s on Yen’s belly and begins to sing,</p><p>
  <em>     “You are my sunshine, my only sunshine,</em><br/>
<em>     You make me happy when skies are gray -”</em>
</p><p> </p><p>If Stregobor would only just fucking give Yen more than just a couple of granular steps on a project at a time, it would be so much easier for her to manage her own workload, but no, he has to be a fucking micromanager.  It’s so much better when she can get files from Istredd or Vilgefortz, both of whom are happy to just give her an entire transaction and let her run with it.  But unfortunately, this month Stregobor has pulled her into a deal that probably isn’t even going to go ahead but that he’s determined to milk for as many billable hours as possible anyway, and he won’t dole out work in chunks of more than a couple of billable hours at a time.  Which means that not only can Yen not really plan her time to get to any of her other files today, but also she has no idea how long she’s even going to be in the office today and her lower back is starting to hurt maybe more than it ever has in her entire life.  She grips her pen a little harder and pretends she’s still listening to Stregobor.  He will probably be back another two times in the next fifteen minutes to remind her of what he’s just asked her to do, so she’ll have another chance to find out what it is.  She tries to breathe through the pain, like she did when she was younger and hadn’t had all of her spinal surgeries yet, but the pain continues radiating outwards until her entire lower abdomen feels white-hot with it.  Fuck, if something is happening to the baby -</p><p>“ -okay?” asks Stregobor, and Yen just wants to slap that condescending little half-smirk right off his face.</p><p>“Okay,” she says, as sweetly as she can under the circumstances.</p><p>As soon as he’s out of her office, she wheels over to shut the door, not trusting herself to stand given the way she’s feeling.  She spreads her legs and bends over in her chair as far as she can, given the size of her belly.  It gives her little relief from the pain, and is accompanied by a deeply unpleasant head rush.  This can’t be good.  There is no way this is good.  She decides to text Shani.</p><p>“Hey, what does it mean if I am having like super bad back pain and menstrual cramps?” she asks.</p><p>“Aren’t you supposed to be pregnant right now?” Shani replies.</p><p>“I AM pregnant,” Yen tells her.</p><p>“Are you at the office?” texts Shani.</p><p>“Yeah, probably all day :/” replies Yen, then, because she is frustrated and knows Shani knows how she feels about Vigo &amp; var Emreis’s managing partner, “Fuck Stregobor.”</p><p>There’s a brief pause, and then Shani comes back with, “With a cactus.”</p><p>Yen sends a reply of three cactus emoji in a row.</p><p>“Listen, don’t go anywhere just yet, but try to drink some water, okay?” texts Shani.</p><p>Yen sends a thumbs up.  She’s in so much pain that she’s not even sure she could stand up to walk to the printer right now, but Shani didn’t seem too worried.  It’s probably nothing.  She takes a careful sip of water and pulls herself back up to her desk, staring at her computer and trying to figure out where to start.  What had Stregobor been asking her to do?  Are there any emails from last night to other clients she could maybe answer before she gets to work on Stregobor’s bullshit transaction?  God, it’s hard to think through all this pain, how did she even do it when she was a kid?  She draws her legs up under her on her chair and buries her head in her hands - it’ll just be for a second, she tells herself.</p><p>The next thing she knows, her office door is opening and Stregobor is inviting himself back in.</p><p>“Were you planning to get to work any time soon?” he asks her.  “We have a pretty full day ahead of us if we want to get another turn of these documents out to the client today.”</p><p>Yen scrubs at her face.  “Yep,” she croaks.  “Just -”</p><p>Suddenly, there’s a commotion in the hallway that sounds like - Lambert, of all people, arguing with someone.  What -?  Yen attempts to get out of her chair but the accompanying wave of pain causes her vision to gray out and she sits rapidly back down.  She can hear Keira telling someone,</p><p>“I realize you’re in charge of security for this building but I am a medical professional and I’m telling you this <em> is </em> a medical emergency,” and then Geralt is pushing his way past Stregobor to get to Yen’s side.</p><p>“What is <em> this </em>?!” demands Stregobor, and Yen hazily remembers that the last time Geralt attended a firm function as her plus one, he left early after offering to punch Stregobor in the face for sexually harassing one of the support staff.</p><p>Geralt ignores Stregobor completely to get to his knees beside Yen’s chair.  “Yen, can you walk?” he asks her.</p><p>“No,” she says, and then, to her shame, she collapses into tears.  Then Geralt is picking her up out of the chair like she weighs nothing and Keira is grabbing Yen’s handbag and Lambert is giving Stregobor a piece of his mind and Stregobor is saying,</p><p>“You’ll still be available by phone, though, right?”</p><p>“What part of ‘medical emergency’ didn’t you understand, asshole?” growls Lambert.</p><p>“What’s happening?” Yen asks Geralt.  It comes out in a scratchy whisper.  </p><p>“Don’t know,” he rumbles.  She buries her face in his shoulder to hide the tears that are still coming out of her eyes.  He always did smell good.  And though she might pride herself on being a strong, independent woman who can make her own way in the world, there is undeniably something comforting about having a strong, handsome man sweeping in to rescue her when she feels shitty.</p><p>Downstairs, one of the big old rusty SUVs from the ranch is parked halfway up the curb with Eskel behind the wheel and a cop car closing in.  Keira gets in the back with Geralt and Yen, Lambert gets in the front, and Eskel peels away before anyone is properly buckled in.  Keira and Geralt help Yen get settled on the bench seat with her head in Geralt’s lap and she grabs for his hand.  With his other hand, he smoothes her hair back from her forehead, which makes the tears prick in her eyes again.</p><p>“What’s going on?” she asks Keira.</p><p>“Shani called Regis, they’re going to meet us at the hospital,” says Keira.  “Jaskier went to go get Triss.”</p><p>Everyone is talking around it, but Yen is a smart woman, she can put the pieces together.  Something <em> has </em> gone wrong with the baby.  Fuck.</p><p> </p><p>An unmeasured number of hours, and an uncounted number of ultrasounds and blood tests later, Yen’s worst fears are confirmed.  Someone, probably Jaskier, has made sure she’s in a private room at the hospital, and most of the extra people who came to make sure she and all her loved ones made it to the hospital have gone again - probably not all the back to their homes, if she knows them.  They’re as good as family to her, and they’re probably waiting worriedly in some diner nearby.  Yen herself is tucked up, half-sitting in a hospital bed, cannula in her nose and IV drip in the back of her hand.  Triss is on one side, holding one hand, and Geralt is on the other side, holding her other hand.  Jaskier is on his other side, holding his other hand.  Yen’s sinuses are throbbing from all the crying she’s done - a side effect of the pregnancy hormones, no doubt - and the pain in her abdomen has barely subsided.  Triss and Jaskier have been crying, too, something they do much more readily than Yen, anyway, and, if Yen isn’t mistaken, even Geralt’s eyes are looking suspiciously red-rimmed.  Regis shoos the last of the nurses out of the room and closes the door.</p><p>“I’m going to lose the baby, aren’t I?” says Yen.  She’s tired of everyone tiptoeing around, speaking in soft voices and euphemisms.</p><p>“Well -” Regis begins, then shuffles the charts in his hands and spreads them out over the bedside tray attached to Yen’s bed.  Yen doesn’t really know what she’s looking at, but Triss’s sharp intake of breath does not sound good.</p><p>“So that doesn’t sound good,” Yen comments.</p><p>“The fetus is showing several significant skeletal malformations,” begins Regis.</p><p>“How significant?” interrupts Yen.  She was born all twisted up, and he should know that - he delivered her.</p><p>Regis rattles off a long list of features, pointing to bits on the ultrasound that look like grainy black and white blobs to Yen but make Triss squeeze her fingers tighter every time.</p><p>“But we can fix that, right?” says Yen.  Sure, it’ll be a complete bitch getting medical insurance now that it’s a pre-existing condition, but her premiums have always been high anyway, after all the surgeries she had as a child and a teen, and the way her dad died -</p><p>“Yen, what you had was a mild case -” begins Regis.</p><p>“ - a <em> mild </em> case -” scoffs Yen, thinking of the near-constant pain, the bullying from her peers, the disgust from her stepfather, but Regis goes on to say,</p><p>“ - this is a more severe case.  <em> If </em> your baby makes it to term, there’s a 95% chance she’ll die in the first month due to respiratory distress, even with the best treatments available on the market.”</p><p>This time it’s Jaskier who has the sharp intake of breath, and Yen can see Geralt’s jaw working.  The room is otherwise silent.</p><p>“Fuck,” says Yen.</p><p> </p><p>Regis leaves them alone for a bit to talk it over.</p><p>“Yen,” says Geralt, and Yen figures he’ll stop there.  They haven’t slept together again since he volunteered to be Yen and Triss’s sperm donor, but emotionally, their relationship is probably better than it’s ever been.  Part of that, for Yen, has been letting go of any expectation that he’ll actually talk about his feelings.  So it’s a bit of a surprise when the next words come out of his mouth and not Jaskier’s.  “Jaskier and I will support you and Triss no matter what you choose.  But this is your decision to make.”</p><p>“That’s - thank you,” says Yen, and squeezes Geralt’s hand.</p><p>“We’re just going downstairs to get coffee with everyone else, but you can text us if you need us,” adds Jaskier, and he kisses Yen and Triss each on the cheek before leaving the room.</p><p>Finally, Yen and Triss are alone together.  They look at each other, still holding hands.  They have a very difficult decision to make.</p><p> </p><p>Triss’s emotions are always closer to the surface but she cries more than Yen is accustomed to seeing.  Yen cries much more than she can reasonably attribute merely to pregnancy hormones.  In the end, they conclude it would be cruel to their baby, and probably dangerous to Yen, to continue with the pregnancy knowing there’s such a high risk.  It’s apparently a condition that’s inherited in an autosomal dominant manner - Yen hasn’t studied any biology since she was a sophomore in high school, but Triss explains that means that since Yen is affected, like her dad was before her, there’s a 50% chance of each one of her babies being affected, too.</p><p>“Fuck,” says Yen, and pinches the bridge of her nose.  Maybe some of this snot will drain out of her nasal passages.  “We - we terminate my pregnancy -” she can’t believe she’s saying this, it’s the exact opposite of what she’s been hoping for and planning for so long, “ -and then we try again, but you carry the baby?”</p><p>“Yen, I’m so sorry,” says Triss, bringing Yen’s hand to her lips, “I know it’s not how you wanted this to go.”</p><p>“It’s not,” agrees Yen.  But - such a low chance of survival?  And to have lived only a short life, full of nothing but pain, like she remembered from her own childhood?  The baby had seemed so real, yesterday, but she’s not, really.  She hasn’t even started kicking yet.  If she was born right now, she wouldn’t be able to breathe on her own.  From what Regis says, she never will be able to breathe on her own.  She’s just - a potential child.  One who could have been, but one who won’t come into being.</p><p>“Let’s do it, I don’t want our baby to have to suffer like I did,” says Yen, and promptly bursts into tears again.</p><p> </p><p>It’s very late in the evening when Yen digs out her phone to message Geralt and Jaskier to let them know what she’s decided.  Since they picked her up from the office, around noon, it looks like Stregobor has phoned her at least ten times, and Cahir has phoned her at least four times.  That’s right, Stregobor had also roped him into working on the file.  She wonders if, as a junior partner, Cahir gets any better treatment from Stregobor than the associates like Yen do.  She doesn’t even want to look at how many emails she has.  She tosses her phone back into her handbag.</p><p>“Ugh, fuck Stregobor.  Can you call the boys?” she asks Triss.  Triss calls the boys.</p><p>Regis lets himself back into the room, tactfully pretending he hasn’t been eavesdropping on their conversation from some improbable distance, and says, “I thought you’d reach a decision that fast.”</p><p>He’s already scribbling something on a notepad.  At first, Yen thinks it might be a prescription for whatever drugs or surgeries she’s going to have to have, but in fact it turns out to be a doctor’s note.</p><p>“Now, we’ll wait until tomorrow to get started,” he says. “The whole procedure takes less than half an hour and you’ll be able to go home the same day.  There’s no reason why you <em> shouldn’t </em> be able to go back to work the day after that, but I’m going to fax this to Stregobor and tell him I recommend you take at least two weeks.”</p><p>“I don’t need it,” says Yen.</p><p>Regis looks at her over the top of his glasses.</p><p>The door swings open and Geralt and Jaskier jostle each other trying to be the first to get to Yen’s bedside.</p><p>“I’m just going to email him my resignation letter instead,” she decides.</p><p>There.  Wow.  That felt good to say.  She feels a huge weight lifted off her shoulders already.</p><p>“Fucking <em> finally </em>,” says Jaskier, and Geralt turns to glare at him.  “Was that my out loud voice?  That was my out loud voice.”  Geralt gives him an exasperated but affectionate thwap on the arm.  “What?  I’m just saying what we were all thinking.”</p><p>“Give me my phone,” says Yen, reaching out a hand.  “I’ll do it right now.”</p><p>Triss reaches into Yen’s bag.  At the same time, Geralt’s phone starts ringing, the ringtone he has set for when anyone from the Vigo &amp; var Emreis switchboard calls him.  He pulls it out of his pocket - and how he can keep anything in the pocket of jeans that tight is beyond Yen, but she’s not complaining - frowns stormily at it, and then answers.</p><p>“Fuck <em> off </em>, Cahir,” he starts.  Oh yes, another reason why he didn’t make the best boyfriend, his tendency to tell her coworkers exactly what he thought of them.  Well, at this point, they were about to not be her coworkers, and she was happy to have him say whatever he liked.  “You and Stregobor have been phoning Yen all day and now you want me to help you find her?  Don’t you have boundaries?”  Yen sees Triss and Jaskier exchanging a covert smile.  “Yen and I broke up -”</p><p>Cahir must interrupt, then, and whatever he’s saying makes Geralt’s face go progressively paler and paler.  His jaw works silently and he fumbles for a seat, which Jaskier hastily guides him to.</p><p>“I’m here with Yen,” he says eventually.  “I’m going to put you on speaker phone.  Can you repeat all that?  Jaskier, get the door.”</p><p>Jaskier gets the door.  Yen tries to sit up a little straighter in her bed, making “what the fuck?” motions at Geralt.</p><p>Cahir’s voice comes through the phone’s speaker, a little tinny and echoey.</p><p>“Hi Yen, can you hear me?  There’s been - an incident,” he says.</p><p>Yen wants to spit back something snarky, like, “you don’t say,” but the look on Geralt’s face tells her this isn’t about her.  “What kind of incident?” she says instead.</p><p>“Emhyr and Pavetta were out on their yacht earlier today when a sudden wind kicked up or something.  Emhyr was able to set a distress signal, but they were both swept overboard.  It took the coast guard several hours to find them, and by the time they got there, Pavetta was - I’m sorry, Yen, she was pronounced dead on the scene, I know you were close, and Emhyr is in a coma.  The doctors think he won’t recover.”</p><p>Yen’s heart has been in the pit of her stomach all day.  It doesn’t have any further to fall.  She supposes Pavetta was a good friend, once, but they’ve been more distant ever since Pavetta got married and had Ciri and became a politician’s wife.  It’s a shitty end to an already shitty day that she’s dead and Emhyr is probably next, but,</p><p>“It was so important to you to break this news to me right away why?” Yen asks.</p><p>“It turns out Emhyr and Pavetta named you and Geralt as Ciri’s guardians in their wills,” says Cahir.</p><p>“Fuck,” says Yen.</p><p> </p><p>After a hurried planning session, Geralt and Jaskier take off to get Ciri right away.  She’s been at Cintra Ranch all day, no doubt picking up on the anxiety of the adults and asking them questions, only to be met with evasive answers and lies that it’s nothing she needs to worry about.  Cahir offers to email Geralt copies of the necessary paperwork - knowing Calanthe, she’s unlikely to just hand over her granddaughter without some sort of fight.  Meanwhile, Yen and Triss stay at the hospital.  Regis gives Yen some kind of medication to start her cervix dilating so he can perform the - extraction - tomorrow.  Yen needs to start thinking of it as a simple medical procedure, just another surgery like all the other ones she’s had in her life.  And then she and Triss can go directly out to the ranch to be with Geralt and Jaskier, and Ciri, who is now their daughter.  She looks up at the ceiling and fights back another wave of tears.  This might not be exactly the way she envisioned the process going, but she <em> is </em> still becoming a mother today.</p><p><br/>
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  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>I ragequit BigLaw after my boss thought I ought to have prioritized a file over attending my grandmother's 90th birthday celebration.  The same boss sat in another coworker's office talking at her about a file while she was having a miscarriage.  The only good thing I can say about this boss is that he did not creep on the support staff, although that is certainly a thing I have seen happen.  The friend who made the heartbreaking decision to terminate a second-trimester pregnancy over serious fetal abnormalities was not in BigLaw.  I didn't ask what they were because it was none of my business, but when I was doing my own research for this fic I discovered <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Campomelic_dysplasia">campomelic dysplasia</a>, which is a weirdly good fit for Yen's canonical childhood disabilities.</p><p>The thrown jar of cherry jam comes from the Witcher short story "Eternal Flame," in which it is suggested that Yen is "in the habit of" throwing jars of cherry jam at Geralt, which is all presented in a very "ha ha, women, so moody and capricious!" way.</p><p>Visit me on <a href="https://ladivvinatravestia.tumblr.com">tumblr</a>, where my ask box is always open.  Unless you want to debate abortion with me, in which case Imma stop you right there and tell you that you are neither going to logic me out of, nor shame me out of, my conviction that every uterus-having person has an absolute right to bodily autonomy, including a right to choose not to be pregnant any more.</p></blockquote></div></div>
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